Alternate History in Star Trek Part 21: Invasion!, Day of Honour and Other Big Thematic Crossovers

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Gary Oswald

It was Vampire Unions that got us Vampire Weekend
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Discuss this article by @Thande here

(Those of you who follow our social media are probably aware that I have stood down as blog editor and I shouldn't be posting this. Unfortunately, there's been some technical problems delaying the handover so you guys are stuck with me for ever and ever, I will never leave a few more days until we can get those technical issues ironed out.)
 
Gary Oswald said:
Discuss this article by @Thande here

(Those of you who follow our social media are probably aware that I have stood down as blog editor and I shouldn't be posting this. Unfortunately, there's been some technical problems delaying the handover so you guys are stuck with me for ever and ever, I will never leave a few more days until we can get those technical issues ironed out.)
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Thanks for stepping into the breech Gary (and for linking to the previous articles).
 
Alex Richards said:
Big crossovers that just end up being loose thematic blah certainly sounds like something you'd see in the comic industry at the time as well.
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Absolutely, say what you will about Generations but at least Picard and Kirk meet on screen! It feels the model they went with is the one you adopt when you have multiple series running concurrently and don't want the crossover to step on anyone's toes and also want each series to get its licks in. I wonder if that's why the Virgin or BBC Doctor Who novels never really did multi-Doctor stories.

For Star Trek during this era you not only have each series having its own continuing novel line, you also have anywhere from 75-100% of them having film/TV material releasing concurrently. Get the sense they wanted to rush in and do it as soon as able.

I don't know what the current state of Star Trek novels are, but strikes me there should be room for a series set in the post-Nemesis, pre-Picard Era that could just be crossovers galore.
 
RyanF said:
I don't know what the current state of Star Trek novels are, but strikes me there should be room for a series set in the post-Nemesis, pre-Picard Era that could just be crossovers galore.
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There was a recent trilogy that nuked the more-or-less consistent STEU of the last ~20 years and reshaped the universe (now apparently the only one, at least until it's not) to align with Picard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_novels#Coda_(2021)
 
RyanF said:
I wonder if that's why the Virgin or BBC Doctor Who novels never really did multi-Doctor stories.
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I think with them, there's the problem that half the point of a multi-Doctor story is seeing the different actors with the same role playing off against each other and you can't easily replicate that thrill in print.
 
Invasion! was one of the first bits of Trek I encountered, certainly before I’d seen TOS other than the endlessly-repeated movies, and before very much if any Voyager had made it to UK terrestrial TV. My clearest memory of it is the profoundly stupid bit where Spock and Chekhov (iirc) work out what Rath means based on poor reading comprehension and extremely dubious knowledge of Earth history. Oh, and the Voyager one with the not!Dyson Sphere was very cool and atmospheric but didn’t make a blind bit of sense. I had actually forgotten there was a TNG entry.
 
MachiavelliJr said:
My clearest memory of it is the profoundly stupid bit where Spock and Chekhov (iirc) work out what Rath means based on poor reading comprehension and extremely dubious knowledge of Earth history.
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This is unfortunately a Diane Carey Thing, and I say this as someone who generally likes her work, but there's a definite feel of 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' when it comes to UK or European history in her books. Of course I didn't notice this when I read them for the first time because I didn't know much about my own country's history then; but I think even young me was still dubious that she, in the Fury book First Strike mentioned here, described a line from "Lord of the Dance" (Sydney Carter, 1963) as being from some ye olde Irish song or something.

I'm currently reading her book Best Destiny, which someone in the comments here informed me was an influence on the 2009 Star Trek film - and they were right - and it starts with this absolutely peculiar spiel about the American Civil War that sounds like it was written by Harry Harrison. Also Robert April is an ineffectual, vaguely aristocratic Englishman in her version because there isn't any other sort.
 
Invasion had a lot of potential, I felt, for something great.

However, the novels were not allowed to alter the status quo. Unlike the Borg of Q Who, who had a visible impact even before they showed up again, the Furies were just a set of villains of the week. They never have any long-term impact when the story might have been more interesting if it treated them as something akin to the Dominion.

Still, Books 1, 2 and 4 weren't that bad based on the limitations. DS9 would have worked better if the Furies themselves had been involved.

Chris
 
ChrisNuttall said:
Invasion had a lot of potential, I felt, for something great.

However, the novels were not allowed to alter the status quo. Unlike the Borg of Q Who, who had a visible impact even before they showed up again, the Furies were just a set of villains of the week. They never have any long-term impact when the story might have been more interesting if it treated them as something akin to the Dominion.

Still, Books 1, 2 and 4 weren't that bad based on the limitations. DS9 would have worked better if the Furies themselves had been involved.

Chris
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This is the primary problem with the spinoff Star Trek novels yes. They did let one of the follow-up series eventually change the status quo I believe (e.g. Seven of Nine dies) but then obviously it got reset when new on-screen Star Trek like Picard started getting made, same as Disney and the Star Wars continuity. I wasn't wedded to the Star Trek future continuity that got replaced like I was to the Star Wars EU (as I'd stopped regularly reading Star Trek novels by then) but I can understand how it annoyed people.
 
Charles EP M. said:
I think with them, there's the problem that half the point of a multi-Doctor story is seeing the different actors with the same role playing off against each other and you can't easily replicate that thrill in print.
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That’s a fair point. Big Finish have done several multi-Doctor stories, but there you do hear the actors playing off each other.

Both TV and audio stories have to deal with the issue that it’s hard to write a Doctor Who story with multiple Doctors. They tend to deal with it by having separate story threads for each Doctor, and then when they are brought together one Doctor plays the main role while the others play more of a companion role.
 
Ncw8 said:
That’s a fair point. Big Finish have done several multi-Doctor stories, but there you do hear the actors playing off each other.

Both TV and audio stories have to deal with the issue that it’s hard to write a Doctor Who story with multiple Doctors. They tend to deal with it by having separate story threads for each Doctor, and then when they are brought together one Doctor plays the main role while the others play more of a companion role.
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The Ten Doctors does a VERY good job of putting multiple Doctors together.

Chris
 
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